She cast one last glance at the table, trying to shake the feeling that she was missing something obvious.
ChapterTwenty-Three
Pippa woke up slowly, aware first of the quiet. No rain on the roof, no wind shaking the windows. Just stillness. She sat up and slipped Theo’s arm from around her waist as she moved. He made a sleepy noise into the pillow, but she was already out of bed and pulling back the curtains. Sunshine poured in across the floor. For a moment it made her smile. The rain had finally stopped! But then the smile disappeared as quickly as it came.
Theo pushed himself up, hair sticking out in every direction. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, blinking at her.
She kept looking outside. ‘It stopped raining.’
‘You didn’t really think it was going to rain for forty days, did you?’
‘No, but…’
‘But?’
‘If it’s stopped raining, the causeway will open soon,’ she said. ‘Which means we’ll have to leave, and we’ll go our separate ways.’ She shrugged, trying to play it casual, but her voice wobbled, giving her away. ‘That makes me sad.’
Theo stretched out his arm and pulled her back into bed as he let out a quiet laugh. ‘Do you have any idea how cute that sounds?’ he said, giving her that warm, slightly amused look. He curled his fingers gently around her wrist and tugged her in close. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘If we’re on borrowed time, we’d better make the most of it.’
* * *
After a breakfast of toast, eggs, and two large mugs of tea, Pippa and Theo stepped outside to a completely different Puffin Island. For the first time since she’d arrived, Pippa could see the island properly. The beach stretched out wide and golden, damp from the last few days’ storm but now sparkling in the July sunshine. The sea was a calm, clean sweep of blue-green, the kind you only ever see on postcards and assume isn’t real. Even the gulls looked happy as they circled above.
She smiled as Theo instinctively took her hand as they walked down the beach path. Children darted around them, shrieking with laughter as they chased one another with plastic buckets. Dogs ran circles around their owners, and everyone greeted them as they walked past.
‘It’s amazing what a bit of sunshine does,’ Theo said, smiling warmly. ‘Life feels a whole lot better.’
‘It does,’ Pippa agreed, though a tiny knot tightened in her stomach. No matter how beautiful the island looked today, she knew they couldn’t hide at Clockmaker’s Cottage forever. The causeway would open, people would arrive, real life would creep in. It was just a matter of time.
They walked a little further, the sun bright on the sea beside them. Then Theo cleared his throat gently. ‘I should tell you something,’ he said. ‘While you were in the shower this morning, I called Clara.’
Pippa glanced at him.
‘I told her it’s over,’ he continued. ‘Properly over. The trust is gone, and I don’t see how I could rebuild it even if I tried. I deserve better than living half in and half out of something that’s already broken.’
Pippa slowed for a moment. She knew that must have taken courage. Real courage. To walk away from something familiar, even when it hurt. To choose himself instead of settling for less. ‘That must have been hard,’ she said.
‘It was,’ he admitted. ‘But it was also the right thing to do.’
She nodded, absorbing his words. Because suddenly they felt uncomfortably close to home. Rob. The wedding. Everything she’d run from. Theo wasn’t someone who clung to the past. He faced things, ended them properly and that, inexplicably, made her chest tighten. It made him feel… unavailable in a new way. Not married. Not trapped. Free to start again. Free to leave. Free to choose someone else. She realised, with a flicker of panic, that she had no idea what she was to him. A friend? A distraction? A convenient companion while he figured his life out? They kept walking and the path opened out, the sea air cool against her face. ‘I mean…’ she began, before she could stop herself. ‘With your new job, who knows?’
He glanced at her.
‘You might meet someone,’ she went on, forcing a smile and pretending she didn’t mind. ‘Fall in love with a woman from New York. Disappear into a new life and never return.’
The thought made something ache quite painfully in her chest.
Theo stopped walking.
Pippa turned to him, and found him looking at her properly. ‘That won’t happen,’ he said. ‘The only way I would fall in love with a woman from New York is if you were there with me.’
Her heart raced, and before she could say anything else, he stepped closer and kissed her.
‘Don’t say anything daft like that again,’ he said lightly as he finally pulled away.
They resumed walking, but her thoughts were tumbling over each other so quickly she could hardly keep up. There was the option of travelling with Theo, but she didn’t want to just tag along. She wanted to make her own name for herself in the field she was in. The last couple of years had been dominated by wedding plans; now this time was for her, and even though she had only been on the island for a short while, she liked it here. More than liked it; she felt peaceful here in a way she hadn’t felt anywhere in years. She’d tossed and turned half of last night, thinking about that converted barn, imagining what it might be like to have something that was hers, something she could incorporate her business into… and alongside those thoughts had been Theo. She’d got him so wrong all those years ago. He, too, was beginning to feel far too important to walk away from. She didn’t know what to do with any of it yet, but one thing she did know was that this all felt like it was the start of something new.
‘I won’t,’ she said, bumping her shoulder playfully into his. ‘Look at this place. Yesterday everything was so soggy and today… it’s beautiful in a totally different way.’
